Please could someone tell me what the exam fees for practical exams Grades 1 to 8, 2019 are? I have searched the site but it will only show the fees for France because my computer is located in France. I was rather horrified to find what they are asking for here, particularly in the early grades and would like to see what the UK prices are.

Thank you Latin Pianist. that's a start. I don't think a link will work. I'll probably just get the "this page is not available" message. Certain parts of the AB site are not accessible unless you are in the UK.

Edit: Grade 1 in France is 77 euros which at today's rate of exchange is £68.93 against £41 for a UK candidate. I do not think the difference of £27.93 is justifiable.

Had a quick glance over some old emails. I don't have a lot of info, as I generally don't keep records, and I haven't entered any exams in a while, but in 2012, a grade 2 was £39.50 and in 2014 it was £42.50. In 2014 a grade 3 was £47.50. I also think I paid around £28 for my first child's grade 1, perhaps 10 years ago.

Someone must have a record of old exam prices. I have an old email from 2014 where I told parents I was concerned about the rising cost of exams and suggested they skip grade 2. (Students both got distinctions at grade 3 a year later.)

We have had eight years now of austerity, low wage rises, low inflation, lucky to get 0.1% interest on savings, etc. How are these price rises justified?

Here are the 2019 rates for France. I don’t know if they are the same in all countries using the euro. Neither do I know how they compare with fees for the Far East. Maybe someone can fill in? Like maggiemay I haven’t got a euro sign on my keyboard so will use E and I have also done the comparison with 2018. The rises have been roughly the same for quite a few years.

Prep Test 68 E = £60.87 up 2 E

Grade 1 77 E = £68.93 up 2 E

Grade 2 97 E = £86. 83 up 3 E

Grade 3 101 E = £90.41 up 3 E

Grade 4 122E = £109.21 up 4 E

Grade 5 128 E = £114.58 up 4 E

Grade 6 170 E = £125.32 up 4 E

Grade 7 156 E = £139.65 up 5 E

Grade 8 178 E = £159.31 up 5 E

I hope I have not made any typing or calculation errors.

The prices have been rising like this steadily over the years (my first entries were in 1996). This has been regardless of rates of inflation in either England or France. In fact the rate of inflation in France remained much lower than in the UK for most of that time and although I haven’t checked, probably still is. Rates of exchange have been reasonably stable until the Brexit crisis.

Some years ago - I can’t remember when - I wrote to the AB and asked them how they justified these large yearly increases and on what criteria they were based. The reply was laughable and certainly not the truth. I was told the prices were based on the cost of music lessons in France. Knowing what I do about the way French instrumental teaching is organised I can only say that they could not possibly know how much lessons here cost unless they had done a survey of the national conservatoires, the regional conservatoires, the municipal music schools and the associative music schools, taken into account the various subsidies given by municipalities and work committees and the various forfeits you pay if you live outside the catchment area, plus the fees charged by an infinitesimal number of private teachers like me.

I’m afraid I think the exam fees are becoming ridiculous. So much so that I am beginning to wonder if it is actually their policy to price Europe out of the market and rely on the UK for their bread and butter and the Far East for their claim to be a world wide organisation. Even so, UK prices are also looking unreasonably high.

Another point. The official timings for piano are the same for Grades 2 and 3 so why is Grade 3 dearer? The same goes for Grades 4 and 5. If the working time of the examiner is the same then the fee should not go up between these pairs of grades. I can’t imagine that a well qualified examiner would find it more difficult to examine a Grade 3 candidate than a Grade 2 candidate or a Grade 5 more difficult than a Grade 4. After all they are all supposed to be able to examine up to Grade 8.

Yes maggiemay, it is very difficult to ask for amounts like that, especially when you have families with more than one child to enter at the same time.

I don't think distance can really be a problem. For a long time hotel prices and train travel have been much cheaper here than in England and I think sending one examiner on a single round European trip probably isn't more expensive than sending several examiners on several shorter tours in the UK. There will, of course be more candidates in the UK per centre but even so, I don't think there can be any reason for such huge discrepancies.

dorfmouse you seem to be a little luckier than my pupils who would have to pay 29 euros more for the same exam. I happen to know that Germany and France are sometimes on the same European tour so I can't imagine why there is such a big difference. Actually I don't think there should be any difference at all - or at any rate only a very small one - in fees for countries in the EU - but then that is now unlikely to be an applicable argument.

I am beginning to suspect the reason why I can't look up the fees for other countries is that the AB likes to keep quiet about the differences in fees between countries. I really would like to know what people pay in Hong Kong, China and Japan.

I could see the French fees if I changed the country of choice, but that was the only one apart from Germany where fees were displayed. I tried Belgium anfd the Netherlands but the fees weren't shown even though the general info. was. Couldn't access the far eastern sites at all.

So in Japan, G1 is slightly cheaper than in Hong Kong, but G8 is considerably dearer? That just doesn't make sense! I can't help but wonder what exactly the Board is trying to do.

Foreign fees aside, though, I can't understand why the UK fees get hiked up each year, and am reconsidering my personal exam plans for 2019. Every year I enter fewer candidates, because neither I nor they can justify forking out this much. I have entered candidates for RSAMD exams in the past (now RCS), and although their fees were, as I recall, not much different, the examiners were at least instrument specific.

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